When I first arrived in China in 1998, I could count on every December and August (and half of July) being completely dead business-wise. This was the time of year we would write articles, do administrative work, catch up on case files and other paperwork, and do internal planning. Clients wouldn’t be traveling over here during that time, and the only drop-ins we had were folks on tour who had a passing interest in business/legal issues and wanted to chat. Those months were rather boring, but at least we got the chance to recharge before the next busy season hit.

Those days are long gone, but this year seems to be particularly nasty. It is now late December, and we are still getting in new projects, having client meetings, etc. There seems to be no sense of the calendar year anymore, just a never-ending series of tight deadlines. This is not necessarily a bad thing, particularly for international business, but it does make it tough on those of us trying to be faithful to our blogs.

Add to the usual flurry of business activities a whole lot of administrative matters that need to be taken care of before year’s end. Chief among these time eaters are annual performance reviews. I am the lucky guy that gets to give performance reviews to the senior patent and trademark attorneys, the IT department, and one or two other miscellaneous folks in the office. Lucky for me, the junior level people are taken care of by the senior people, the commercial/corporate lawyers are being handled by one of my partners, and the litigators and tax people have also been foisted onto someone else. That still leaves me with at least 10 or 15 people that I am personally responsible for, and for some reason, I have not been able to keep those review sessions under 45 minutes. As of today, I am three days behind schedule, and the HR guy is not happy.

I miss those boring days of December. At least we still have Spring Festival to look forward to. I am worried, however, that as the business community steadily increases its grip on society here, even that might shrink away to nothing.